Take a look at Debbiesidea.com, a neat little resource for book suggestions of what to read first from a particular author. Recommendations are based on the collective intelligence (meaning: anyone can add anything to any author page). It needs a lot of care and, obviously, more users, but it could be a useful tool. Here’s some information on where the idea came from:

“Debbiesidea.com grew out of a friendship between Debbie Sankey, a lifelong lover of music and books, and Ellen Pall, a writer.

Long before the Internet was commonly available, Debbie had the idea that it would be useful to have a reference work suggesting which book of an unfamiliar author would be best to read first. Start reading an author with a poor or atypical example of his work, she observed, and you would likely never read that writer again—perhaps losing in the process a world of pleasure and knowledge. On the other hand, since there would seldom be one right book to read first, the resource would have to be a compendium of opinions.

Debbie died in 2004, at the age of ninety. This website has been created in loving memory of her and her very good idea.”

Whoa! Debbie was thinking of wikis before the Internet. She must have been a Library 1.0 advocate. (link via Notions’ Oceans